Back in July, I posted a story about how courts and lawyers frequently assess whether a noncompete is overly broad by asking whether the restriction would prevent the employee from working as a janit...
The BRR 50 State Noncompete Chart has been updated today to reflect a new laws in Idaho, Massachusetts, and Utah (and a few additional tweaks in other states). (See "Changing Trade Secrets | Noncompe...
Last week, I posted an article explaining the new noncompete and trade secrets law reform legislation passed by the Massachusetts Legislature. See Massachusetts noncompete and trade secret reform ha...
Almost a decade in the making, the Massachusetts legislature has today (July 31 - at 11:57 PM) finally passed noncompete reform. Unheralded, however, is the companion updating of Massachusetts trade s...
Despite the lack of headlines, the Massachusetts Legislature has continued to move closer and closer toward noncompete and trade secret reform. It now looks potentially imminent. On January 23, 201...
The "janitor rule," as it's come to be known, is the rule of thumb in restrictive covenant law that if a noncompetition agreement (or other restrictive covenant) restricts the scope of a former employ...
Yesterday, I posted about the bills to ban noncompetes at the federal level: Federal Legislators Propose Noncompete Ban. Only the House bill was available on line; the Senate bill was not. Whil...
On April 26, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Workforce Mobility Act to impose a federal ban on the use of employee noncompetes. A compan...
On Tuesday, April 17, the Massachusetts legislature's Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development favorably reported H.4419 to the House Steering, Policy and Scheduling. The new bill - w...
This was a busy week for noncompete laws. Two of the states that have actually made changes to their noncompete laws in the past two years - Idaho and Utah (see Changing Trade Secrets | Noncompete Law...
Proposed legislation banning noncompetes has become de rigueur. Two more states - Vermont and New Hampshire - have introduced noncompete bills in just the past two weeks. Vermont's bill would ban a...
Early this year, Pennsylvania joined the bandwagon of states considering modifying their noncompete laws. (For a comprehensive list and on-going updates, see Changing Trade Secrets | Noncompete Laws....
The New Jersey legislature is considering noncompete reform. The current bill, Senate Bill 3518, largely tracks the concepts - and, in some instances, the language - of the Massachusetts bills that...
Today, the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development held a hearing on the 8 bills involving noncompetes or trade secrets currently pending at the State House. As many of you w...
In preparation for an upcoming discussion of trade secrets law for PLI in San Francisco (Trade Secrets 2017: What Every Lawyer Should Know), I reran my chart of noncomepte and trade secrets decisions....
It turns out that I missed a few bills! New York: Two identical bills (one in the Assembly (A 6419) and one in the Senate (S 4688)) to adopt the Uniform Trade Secrets Act; and one (S 1204) that...
For those following noncompete and trade secrets legislative activity around the country, I just updated our Changing Trade Secrets | Noncompete Laws page. (This is a never-ending task with so many s...
Almost nine years in the making, Massachusetts is on the cusp of noncompete reform. And, decades in the making (yes, decades, thanks to Steve Chow's extraordinary efforts), Massachusetts is also...
The BRR 50 State Noncompete Chart has been updated today to reflect a few developments in various states and to make a few tweaks since the last draft. Most significantly, Nevada adopted a bran...
Noncompete agreements have for about a decade been the focus of legislative efforts around the country. Some states seek to strengthen enforcement of them, while others seek to scale them back or elim...
On June 3, 2017, Nevada enacted a new law that made significant changes to Nevada noncompete law. Contrary to the recent developments and indications, the new law made enforcement of noncompetes i...
Noncompetes are intended to protect legitimate business interests in appropriate circumstances, including when necessary for the protection of a company's trade secrets, confidential information, or ...
As more people flowed from to Washington from California than anywhere else in the country (thank you William Molinski and Andrew Arranger of Orrik), Washington has over the past few years introdu...
As regular readers of this blog know, several years ago, I became curious to see how many reported trade secret / noncompete decisions were issued each year in all federal and state courts around the...